


100,000 Fireflies

by cyprianlatewood



Series: 69 Love Songs Vol 4 [6]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Beta Read, Pre-Femslash, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29889030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprianlatewood/pseuds/cyprianlatewood
Summary: A rewrite of S5E11 with Quentin, from Fen's POV. Fen has some feelings about Fillory, and her friends help her come to terms with their decision. Inspired by the song 100,000 Fireflies by the Magnetic Fields.
Relationships: Fen/Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: 69 Love Songs Vol 4 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162388
Kudos: 14





	100,000 Fireflies

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched s5e11 and was feeling really sad for Fen, and the way she was treated. So in this version, everyone is a little more honest, and a little nicer. Also, I just love this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHkAqWa9gW0)
> 
> Hope you enjoy this little bit of angsty fluff.

_I have a mandolin  
_ _I play it all night long  
_ _It makes me want to kill myself  
_ _I also have a Dobro  
_ _Made in some mountain range  
_ _Sounds like a mountain range in love  
_ _But when I turn up the tone  
_ _On my electric guitar_

_I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me  
_ _I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me_

_I went out to the forest and caught  
_ _100,000 fireflies  
_ _As they ricochet round the room  
_ _They remind me of your starry eyes  
_ _Someone else's might not have made me so sad  
_ _But this is the worst night I ever had_

_'Cause I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me  
_ _I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me  
_ _Always was_

_You won't be happy with me  
_ _But give me one more chance  
_ _You won't be happy anyway  
_ _Why do we still live here  
_ _In this repulsive town?  
_ _All our friends are in New York  
_ _Why do we keep shrieking  
_ _When we mean soft things?  
_ _We should be whispering all the time_  
  
\- The Magnetic Fields, 100,000 Fireflies

Fen was reeling as she sat hunched over her leftover burrito at the Penthouse counter. Everything she had ever known was about to disappear. Memories assaulted her: running through the Darkling Woods with Bayler and the other kids, pretending to be chased by elephants; then, actually running into the elephants and having to explain to their disappointed parents where they had been after being delivered safely home by Humbledrum and Honeyclaw, who had rescued them just in the nick of time. Playing hide and seek in the Chankly Bore with her cousins, picnics in the Southern Orchard every time Green Giraffe month came around. Riveting tales of Ember and Umber’s childhood told by her father over a bonfire with all her extended family after a long harvest day. Practicing knife-throwing with her father. Tears sparkled in her eyes as she thought of him in his workshop, blissfully unaware of what was coming.

She hadn’t seen her father or the rest of her family since she married Eliot, and even though she knew they would be safe, she couldn’t imagine the devastation they would feel when they learned that the land they called home was completely gone. But Ember’s emanation in their collective dream had made their limited choice pretty clear: the end of all living creatures on every planet and realm, or the end of Fillory. And Umber’s emanation had given them a way to get the Fillorians to safety, wherever that may be. Alice had some idea of how to create a new Fillory for them, which sounded absolutely insane to her, but not more insane than some of the stuff she had seen since meeting this particular group of magicians. She knew they were doing the right thing, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

Eliot came to sit beside her, clearly noticing her distress. He was always observant like that — of all the Children of Earth she could have been forced to marry, at least it was someone who truly cared about his people. And she liked to think she was one of his people, by this point. He draped an arm around her and she leaned her head into the crook of his arm. A space normally occupied by Quentin these days; she had forgotten how comforting it could be, in his embrace like this. 

“I know this can’t be easy,” he said gently after a while, warm breath grazing the top of her hair as he spoke. 

She sniffed. “I know Fillory has its flaws. I just can’t help but think — if this were Earth, wouldn’t we be trying a little harder to find a solution where we could save the planet _and_ the people on it?” He was quiet for a moment. Then he gave her shoulder a squeeze she couldn’t interpret. His voice was tight when he answered her.

“I know I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like, to have to give up your home to save your family. Where I grew up — it was sort of the other way around, for me. My family was — well, they weren’t very accepting of who I was, who I wanted to be. And the same was true for most of the rest of the town, if I’m being honest. When I left town at 18, I hardly spared a backwards glance for them. But there were definitely parts of Indiana that I was sad to leave behind. Parts that will always stay with me, even now.”

Fen looked up at him. From this angle, his expression was hard to read. But his grip on her shoulder hadn’t loosened. “Can you tell me about them? The parts you miss?”

“There were these huge open fields — farming, as you know.” His eyes went distant as he spoke. “At night, in the summer, there were these insects called fireflies, and they would flash this greenish light. The whole field would be filled with the blinking of these tiny lights. I would just lay out there sometimes for hours, watching them. Sometimes my brothers would come out with jars, catch a few of them to bring up to their rooms as a nightlight. I never understood why - they would just die within the day. But out there, in the field, I could have my own nightlights, hundreds of thousands of them, whenever I wanted. It was beautiful.”

Fen furrowed her brow. “We have fireflies in Fillory. But when they sting you, they set your skin on fire. It’s actually a real problem in some villages to the South.” 

Eliot laughed. “Of course they do.” 

Fen knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but it still hurt, a little, that laugh.“Tell me more,” she prompted.

“Well, actually, when I was in high school, I did know a few people who I could sort of stand. We did theater together, musicals and things.” Fen nodded. She had seen some musicals on Broadway, and heard Eliot singing when he thought he was alone, or sometimes even when he knew he wasn’t. He had a gorgeous voice. She tried to imagine him as a teenager, with little success.

“Anyway, we would get together after rehearsals, sometimes, at the house of one of the cast members. They had a bunch of random instruments and gear in the garage, and we would play music until curfew. I sang, mostly, but sometimes I tried out different instruments. I even played a mandolin for a while. We never played any gigs, or recorded any songs, but it was fun. It was kind of the only thing that kept me going, for a few years.”

“But you left them behind?”

“Well, yeah. It was over by then, anyway. I kind of seduced the guitarist’s boyfriend after prom, which didn’t go over too well. So I became ‘persona non grata’ in the one circle of people who didn’t already hate me for being gay in the first place. Like I do.”

“I’m sorry Eliot, that sounds terrible.” He sat up, arm dropping, and shrugged. Putting up his facade when things got too real — it must have hit a nerve. She didn’t see that too much from him anymore, since Quentin.

“Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is, you’re not alone. Even if it sucks, there will still be people, Fillorians, who love you. And us, obviously. And you’ll still have memories of all the places you loved, and other Fillorians who can fill in the memories of the other places. It won’t be really gone, so long as you are all still around. Right?” He looked at her, imploring. 

She sighed. She knew he was trying to comfort her, but also that they needed her help, and so there was some urgency and pressure behind his words. That’s okay. She would take the comfort as she needed. Fen had been raised for marriage to a Child of Earth. Ultimate self-sacrifice in the name of the Fillorian people. She just needed to draw on that training once more now, to save them from the Dark King and extinction at the hands of the Takers.

“Okay. You’re right. Let’s do this,” she said with a bravado she didn’t quite feel. Eliot reached out to cup her face in his large hand, wiping a tear gently from her cheek. The tenderness in his gaze almost made her start crying all over again. She gave him a shaky smile. Then they stood and joined the others in the common area. It was time to go to Vancouver and get the Arc.

—

Eliot may have been sympathetic, but Margo was definitely not. She had been pretty awful to Fen ever since the whole thing with Josh came out into the open, but it had seemed like things were getting better. Not so much now. Ever since Hyman traveled them to Umber’s hideout, and she answered the ghost butler’s riddle with Fillorian scripture (her eyes watering all over again as she recited the story of the great Tigress drowning in the ocean, and Ember and Umber’s birth from the shells that arose from her sacrifice), it seemed like Margo was trying to belittle her at every turn. She scoffed at Fen’s excitement over seeing the Fillorian maps and drawings on the walls. When Fen was trying to choose the Arc from the selection of pocket worlds before they all exploded (Umber really loved riddles, apparently, which sort of surprised her given his tendency towards order and straightforward nature), Margo just kept picking at her until she couldn’t stand it another second. She turned to Margo as a sudden feeling of rage rose up in her, and told her she could solve the riddle herself before stomping back upstairs to cool off. How could Margo be like this? Surely she loved Fillory almost as much as Fen; she had been willing to sacrifice her boyfriend to save it, after all. And the lengths she went to in order to get the banishment removed, when she could have just fucked off to Earth and let them all suffer? 

As she stewed in the now-dark living room, she heard a soft shuffling and looked up. It was Quentin. He waved shyly and took the seat across from her, separated by a small end-table holding a large iron bowl. He coughed a few times, and then spoke. His voice seemed deafening in the tense quiet. 

“I think — Margo is grieving too, you know. She’s not always great at feelings, we both know that. In my experience, she usually deals with them by putting on extra armor, and pushing away anyone who threatens to widen the chinks. I don’t think she is trying to hurt you on purpose. She just — doesn’t like to be reminded of what we are all giving up, here.” 

Fen thought back to when they thought Eliot was dead. Margo had been devastated. Fen hadn’t seen it at first, drowning in her own grief, but Margo was holding herself together by fraying threads, and the harder Fen tried to push her to loosen them, the more Margo pulled away. When she asked why Margo couldn’t just grieve, let it out so that she might start to recover, she just gritted her teeth and told her that if she started to cry, she was afraid she might never stop. 

The truth hit Fen like a Lorian blade to the chest. It wasn’t that Margo didn’t feel as much as Fen. It was that she felt _more_ , so much more that she was terrified of flying to pieces from its force. And somewhere, a long time ago, she had responded to these feelings by wrapping them up tight and lashing out at everything that came near. And it must have worked. Because she never let them out again.  She almost gasped at her overwhelming sadness for that younger Margo. What must have happened to her, to make her like that? Had anyone ever really been there for her? 

Eliot had. And Quentin. So maybe Fen could, too. She opened her mouth to respond to Quentin, when a sizzling noise in the air between them made her start. As they watched, a little cloud of flame appeared, attached to a note scribbled with Fillorian script. The flame dissipated into a puff of ash, and the singed paper floated down into the iron bowl, which Fen now saw was filled with similar notes. Quentin looked up at her quizzically. “Fillorians always wrote their prayers to Umber on little notes like these and burned them. I guess this is where they went,” she explained, feeling a yawning pain in her chest at the thought.

“But he’s dead,” Quentin said, confused. 

Fen shrugged. “I never said we were a rational people.” She felt deeply ashamed, all of a sudden, of her petty reaction. And of the stupid, backwards nature of the home she was so loathe to lose. But before she could say anything else, there was a loud bang from downstairs and the sound of Margo cursing. They ran down in time to see half of the pocket worlds in smithereens on the floor. Without thinking, Fen reached for the Arc (she had known instantly which one it was) and grabbed it before it could explode. As the room stilled, they all looked at her in wonder and confusion. 

“We’re going to put all the Fillorians in a Seahorse?” Josh asked, skeptically. 

“That’s how Ember and Umber brought the us to Fillory,” she explained. “They chartered the Great Seahorse to carry us there in its pouch.” She looked over at Margo, who was shaking a little from the explosions, but trying not to show it. A grudging respect was fighting to take over her face. Fen looked at her and tried her best to convey her understanding with her expression. It must have worked, because Margo seemed to drop some of the tension in her shoulders and came over to her. 

“Good work, Fen,” she crowed with only a little false brightness, giving her a pat on the back. Fen smiled and they walked out together, bearing the Arc that would save her people. 

Back at the Penthouse, she waited for a moment to talk with Margo alone. Finally, she spotted her chance when she noticed Margo alone out on the balcony, facing out over the city with her elbows on the railing. Quentin and Eliot were cuddling together on the couch, but she caught Quentin’s eye for a moment. He flicked his eyes up to the balcony and then back to her, giving a small nod. Eliot looked over questioningly, and Fen shrugged with a sort of awkward smile. He gave her an approving look, and then turned back to his boyfriend. 

She slipped through the narrow opening in the balcony door, trying to avoid drawing attention. Of course, she got stuck, and Margo had to help her through. Blushing with embarrassment, she apologized. “It’s fine, whatever,” Margo waved it away. “What’s up, Fen?” She tapped her foot a little in feigned impatience.  Now that Fen had seen through Margo’s deliberate armor, the pain seemed a lot more visible to her. But it still felt like petting a bramblebee — what could she say that wouldn’t trigger her defenses? She settled for brutal honesty.

“I know you are upset, too — about destroying Fillory. I know that’s why you are being mean to me. But I just — I’m on your side, Margo. I know you’re mad about everything that happened, but I — I miss you. I know we weren’t great friends, but I felt like we were starting to be, and I want another chance. Please, can we just start over? This whole thing sucks, and it feels like it might suck a bit less if we could do it together, without being so mad at each other all the time.” 

She looked at Margo, nervously. Not quite the epic speech she had been aiming for, but maybe it would be enough? Margo looked like she was ready to explode, lips pursed, arms tight across her ribs. Finally, she sighed and shifted to a more relaxed posture. She rolled her eyes and blew a puff of air from the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, okay, I _guess._ I sort of missed you too. I was kind of a raging dick on the double moon, and I didn’t _totally_ mean it when I said I didn’t care. I was pissed. Obviously.”

“Are you and Josh —" Fen started, then turned red. What was she doing? But Margo didn’t take offense. Clearly, the whole impending-apocalypse thing put their other drama into perspective. 

“No, I don’t think so. I feel like maybe that whole thing was like — some residual werewolf feelings? I can sort of see the difference now, between what the wolf wants and what I want, and the part of me that wants to go back to how they were, with him — that’s clearly the wolf talking.”

Fen nodded in agreement. “Yeah, the wolf thing really sucks, I know what you mean. When this is all over, maybe we can figure out a way to get it removed. It’s just a curse, after all, and one with animal origins — I know it’s treated as incurable on Earth, but I’m sure there’s a curse-breaker on Fillory who knows an answer. Talking animals, and all that.”

“You know, Fen, you’re pretty smart. I should probably stop taking you for granted,” Margo admitted. Fen didn’t think it was possible to blush harder than she was already, but there it was.  Margo’s eyes glittered as she took in the reaction. 

But then the moment passed, and Margo looked away towards the living room with a sigh. “We should probably get back in there and save those limp dicks from making a truly terrible heist plan,” and pulled the door open with efficiency. Before she went inside, she turned to look at Fen once last time, her face suddenly open in a way Fen had never seen. “And you’re right. I’m gonna miss Fillory, too. But we’ll make a new one. With more of the good parts, and less of the bad.” And as Fen followed her into the room, she started to think about what that might look like, if they could overcome all the insurmountable odds in between. From where she was standing, it was looking pretty perfect.


End file.
